“I must congratulate the Birmingham bid team for the work that has been undertaken in preparing a comprehensive proposal for 2022,” the CGF president, Louise Martin, said. “We have carefully reviewed the bids and updates received as part of the ongoing 2022 candidate city process and have agreed – noting the challenging timescales and no fully compliant bid – that further time should be given to all interested parties to enable the submission of fully compliant proposals.”

It is understood there were concerns about how solid guarantees were around certain pledges in the bid, namely Birmingham City Council’s promise that it had secured land in the Perry Barr area of the city for a proposed Athletes’ Village. But government and the Birmingham 2022 bid team were hopeful that the setback would not be terminal.

The chief executive of Commonwealth Games England, Paul Blanchard, said: “We are confident that Birmingham’s bid demonstrates that the city has the ability to stage a fantastic Commonwealth Games in 2022. It was a huge effort to put such a comprehensive bid together in such a short timescale. We’ve always said that even though Birmingham was the only city to submit a bid there would still be a few hurdles to clear before a decision was made on formally awarding the Games.”